Common Cents

Summary: Common Cents is an economy overhaul for Starfield, but instead of doing anything invasive like reducing trader prices by 90% (plus the built-in buy/sell), which creates ugly or unimmersive prices like selling something worth 1000 credits for 10 or something weird, I changed the values of everything in the base game (which was way more complicated than expected for certain things) shattered space and Terran Armada.

-Lets use Aurora and Caelumite for example. Aurora requires a quest chain to make and is an addictive contraband drug. Base game value is 760 with the base game sell price of 12.5% that's 95 credits. This sets the value to 6000 making the sell price 750 which I think is fair given the effort you go through. Caelumite is a unique but only worth 264 which sells for a whole 33 credits and you can't farm it at an outpost and requires much more effort to get. at 1250 it sells for 156 but also importantly, increases the price of craftables used by it. 

-This mod may work without the DLCs(I suspect) however it does edit both Shattered Space and Terran Armada and I would recommend you have them anyway.

This changes values for the base game of all items, making quests, contraband, resources, crafting, and finding things like Old World relics feel good instead of finding 4 common weapons and selling them for more than that Aurora and quest was worth. This mod should be compatible with basically anything that doesn't change internal values of items. I made it immersive but rewarding effort, which is basically a tier system on rarity for all things, and then I tied every change to crafting prices as well. For now, this mod won't affect other mods (although I would like to add support for the big ones like Watchtower etc. in the future). Also, this mod doesn't inherently fix outpost spam or whatever you're into for breaking the economy—this is for someone that wants an economy that makes sense and is fun. All that effort to make Aurora just for it to be worth like a common gun drop is crazy and not worth the effort. Stuff like that is disappointing and what I fixed. When a rattler sells for more than Aurora, it makes all the effort seem like a waste of time. If I explained every change I made, I would basically need to write a book. The simple explanation is I based all resource prices around rarity and the buy/sell mechanics in the game including perks. Once I had all the base resource prices laid out, I then figured out what every item crafted in the game should be worth. Which obviously changed all crafting prices. Now if you set out to be a chef, pharmaceutical dealer, pirate, smuggler, miner, crafter etc. etc., they will feel lucrative because the value shifts towards rarity and effort but also keeps it lore-friendly and thought out around the barter system in place. I also changed things like digipicks (4x cheaper than a small desk fan?), Old World relics or unique items etc. to hold more weight so scavenging feels good. I also made changes to clutter and junk to make more sense as well and changed some things for fun. If you dive into food and medicine lore, base prices on common items actually make a lot of sense so I used that as a baseline for everything else. The biggest change here is weapon prices really. The price of guns, even common ones which doesn't make sense even for the setting of the game, ruins almost all aspects of the economy because nothing comes close to gun sales. The price scales up like everything else obviously as you progress through the tiers of weapons but base prices for early game and on were what broke the economy in my opinion. This really helps with opening other avenues for credits. You will find that the highest tiers of crafting are by far the most lucrative in this system. Now if you see a cave with unique ores you will likely want to hit them up which would make sense. Prior to this I never saw unique ore as a way to make money for example.

To avoid any mod conflicts(value resets) if you're using a mod that does change the items values or anything like that and you want this mods prices to be in affect I would recommend loading this after that mod.

I work full time with a family and this is my first mod so outside of like updates and what have you, I won't be taking mod requests but I will change things if someone changes my mind. I have other mod ideas I'd like to work on as well but progress will likely be slow like this was.